Chip security startup raises VC for mobile push

LONDON – Intrinsic-ID NV, a vendor of hardware-derived security technology, has received 5 million euro (about $6.7 million) in a round of funding led by Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and joined by existing investor Prime Ventures.

Intrinsic-ID (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) was formed in 2008 as a spin-off from Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Intrinsic-ID's hardware intrinsic security (HIS) makes use of unique characteristics particular to each IC to derive encryption keys. The company's technology was also called Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). This allows a device to generate a secret key only when needed and power down with no key present. The technology has been used to secure assets against cloning, tampering, theft-of-service and reverse engineering and has een licensed to companies that incorporate the technology in Smart and SIM Cards, automotive and embedded processors, set-top boxes, pay-TV, networking, communications, FPGAs and government applications. It is available in all modern technology nodes and is scalable with silicon area, Intrinsic-ID said.

Pim Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic-ID, said that the company planned to use the investment to scale deployment to the mobile payment and cloud services markets through a "rapid expansion of our sales, support and engineering teams."

"We believe that Intrinsic-ID's unique solution has the characteristics of becoming a key technology for the Internet of Things and that it is therefore of great strategic importance," said Claus Schmidt, Managing Director of Robert Bosch Venture Capital, in a statement issued by Intrinsic-ID.